Labor productivity of small-scale agriculture and its influence on agricultural landscape conservation in mountainous ar
- PDF / 758,334 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 87 Downloads / 182 Views
ENVIRONMENTAL TOXICOLOGY AND RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH HUMAN HEALTH
Labor productivity of small-scale agriculture and its influence on agricultural landscape conservation in mountainous areas in China: a case study of rice farming in Hani terraced region Yongxun Zhang 1 & Lulu He 1,2 & Longteng Liu 3 & Qingwen Min 4 Received: 27 December 2019 / Accepted: 7 April 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Small-scale agriculture (SA) is regarded as unsustainability because of its low benefit. To protect traditional agricultural landscapes like terraces through SA will be difficult. However, in China, terraces are still maintained well by smallholders now. This study takes the family as a basic unit and SA in Hani terraced region as an object to explore its sustainability from the perspective of labor productivity (LP) through the questionnaire method. The findings are that peasant households work on both farm and non-farm jobs. They get a low income (3854.5 yuan RMB) from hybrid-rice-cropping and a high income (44,665.8 yuan RMB) from non-farm jobs but spend a small part of labors (34.23 person•days) in growing hybrid-rice and expended lots of labor (522 person•days) for non-farm jobs. In conclusion, LP of hybrid-rice-cropping is 1.32 times that of non-farm jobs for a household. The result shows SA in Hani terraced region has a higher return of labor investment than non-farm jobs. It is different from the common impression of the low benefit of SA and also explains why SA still continues to exist in the mountainous area in China now. However, SA in Hani terraced region also faces challenges with salary level rise of non-farm jobs and part-time farmers’ requirement for living quality improvement. In the future, promoting industrial integration development in this region to add local employment for improving farmers’ income is a feasible approach to protect terraced landscapes. Keywords Labor productivity . Hani terraces . Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) . Terraced landscape . Livelihood strategy
Introduction Yongxun Zhang and Lulu He contributed equally to this work. Responsible Editor: Eyup Dogan * Yongxun Zhang [email protected] * Longteng Liu [email protected] * Qingwen Min [email protected] 1
Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, No. 12, Zhongguancun South Street, Haidian District, Beijing 100081, China
2
College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University, No. 2, Yuanmingyuan West Road, Beijing 100094, China
3
Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, No. 150, Qingta Village, Fengtai District, Beijing 100141, China
4
Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
With rapid economic development and urbanization, lots of rural laborers continuously migrate into urban areas. The migrant workers from rural areas were 140 million in 2008, increased to 159 million in 2011, and up to 172 million in 2017 (Ministry of
Data Loading...
